Lacey Li and her
fiance Silas Brennan are Adults.
Their daughter Phoebe Li is a Child.
Lacey’s daughter Winter Li is a
Teen.
* * *
The wedding was a total non-event, for how much time Lacey
spent talking about it. They said their vows on the front porch. Silas’s
brother Liam was there, and Liam’s daughter Autumn. Liam’s wife didn’t even
come – Liam made excuses, but everyone knew it was that she had never liked
Silas and didn’t approve of Lacey.
Silas also invited Kaley. Lacey tried to pretend she wasn’t
there. Phoebe told Winter it was probably so he could show Kaley that their
affair was over, but secretly she didn’t know what to think. She and Winter
both knew that he and Kaley had still been seeing each other in the time since
the engagement, although Phoebe tried her best to pretend it wasn’t happening.
After the ceremony, such as it was, they retreated to the
bedroom while Liam watched Phoebe for them. When they emerged, Lacey sat down
next to Liam and started making innuendoes, while Liam just sat there looking
awkward – what else could he do? Silas watched in growing fury, while Lacey
shot him a triumphant look. That was what he got, she communicated without
words, for inviting Kaley to their wedding.
Unsurprisingly, Winter was spending as little time as
possible at home these days. She tried to take Phoebe with her whenever she
could – even though it drove her crazy that Phoebe could stay even a little bit
in denial about the state of their family, she didn’t want Phoebe exposed to
that household any more than necessary. They often spent their afternoons at
the library together, where Phoebe practiced her typing while Winter honed her
hacking skills. It wasn’t that she was interested in computers, exactly – she
only knew a little, and didn’t intend to learn more. But she knew just enough
to make a few things go wrong in small ways, and she got a vindictive sort of
happiness from imagining people’s reactions. As ways of venting her frustration
went, she rationalized, this was a lot healthier than some of the other options
she could have chosen.
She sometimes met up with Iris at the library, too, and
every time they did, she told herself she would finally get up the nerve to
kiss her, the way she had wanted to ever since she had started to become aware
of girls in that way. But every time,
she chickened out, and she and Iris remained best friends – but nothing more.
Kaley kept coming around the house. Whenever Winter saw her,
she would yell at her through the door until she left. But she knew Kaley had
to be coming over when she and Phoebe were in school, too, and there was no one
to stop her then.
Winter didn’t even know why she cared. She had no reason to
protect her mother, after all. It wasn’t as if she and her mother even liked
each other. The only thing that stopped her from running away from home was
that she didn’t want to start eating off strangers’ picnic tables again. And
besides, there was Phoebe. Winter didn’t want to care about her, but she did.
Phoebe liked spending time at the triplets’ house better
than at her own, these days. It was getting harder and harder to ignore the
tension in her house. The triplets’ house was always noisy, but in a good way.
Even if someone was yelling, it was only ever about something like homework.
And while the triplets’ mom was perpetually tired, Phoebe never saw her talking
to anyone who wasn’t there.
But unlike Winter, Phoebe hadn’t lost all faith in her
family. Even though she couldn’t pretend everything was fine like she could
when she was younger, she still loved her parents, and she didn’t want to end
up isolated from them like Winter. So she tried her best to stay friendly with
them, even when her mom said things that didn’t make sense or her dad invited
Kaley over.
It made Winter cringe every time. She knew this was only
going to end badly for Phoebe, but she couldn’t protect her sister from reality
forever. At a certain point Phoebe was just going to have to learn this lesson
on her own.
Winter hadn’t realized quite how old Silas was until his
birthday arrived. Getting older certainly didn’t seem to improve his demeanor
any. His hair was grayer, and he complained more about his back, but he was the
same unpleasant person he had always been. But Silas’s birthday did make Winter
uncomfortably aware of his mortality. Although she would be just as happy to
never have to see him again, once Silas was gone, so was all the money their
household was pulling in. She had no illusions about her mother’s capabilities;
as soon as Silas died, they would be back to living in the park again. She only
hoped she and Phoebe were out of school and able to support themselves before
that happened.
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